You can't help but feel for Justin Wilson. As pleasant as he is talented, Wilson scores the Champ Car lottery ticket by securing the ride of the departing four-time champion, only to find out he's now a newly unified mid-pack entry on most weekends.

Well at least he can bask in a few weeks of glory after scoring his first IndyCar podium at Edmonton right?

Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver Justin Wilson was uninjured in a crash this afternoon while participating in a one-day test at the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway. It was the first test on an oval for the team since the pre-season test at Homestead-Miami Speedway March 24-25.

After completing an installation run and a subsequent pit stop to analyze the racecar, Wilson returned to the track and was near the end of his first run when he lost control between Turns 1 and 2 and made contact with the Turn 2 wall. The car, a new chassis which made its racing debut in Watkins Glen where he started second, sustained extensive damage and is unlikely to be repaired in time for the IndyCar Series Meier Indy 300 race here on August 9. Wilson’s other McDonald’s race car is being driven by teammate Graham Rahal at this test while his No. 06 Hole in the Wall Camps race car is being repaired after being hit twoseparate times in Edmonton.

At some point during this coming winter the folks at N/H/L are going to look back at their season, where they've had an owner with serious medical issues, a longtime crew member senselessly killed, any number of extended days due to repairs, and they're going to just vomit. But for now, it's back to work!

UPDATE: According to the Braintrust at TrackSide Online, Rafael Matos, also in Kan-Tuck-Kee for testing, showed why he’s in the Indy Lights series by promptly taking Tony Kanaan’s #11 for a joyride into the wall. In case you see Nariz wielding a large piece of carbon fiber and babbling incoherently in Portugese, you know why.